Cardartin' check-in, Spring 2024

I've still been spending a lot of my time on cardart pursuits.. Thinking up things to do to cheap old cards that might be cool/fun/interesting/ridiculous, then getting around to actually working on some of those ideas. 

Here's a big project that was an endurance test for my short attention span, but I'm really happy with how it turned out:

Randy Johnson rookie super rainbow display consisting of 9 mods of his Topps rookie card

I'm currently able to make 9 different color "supers"-- silver, gold, yellow, pink, red, purple, light green, dark green, and blue-- so that works out perfect for filling up a binder page or one of these 9-card screwdown frames. And the frame is hangable, making it a nice wall display piece.

The backs are.. kinda interesting? I think using color-matching pens is a nice touch. 

I definitely want to make more displays along these lines "rainbowing" cheap iconic cards from before the parallel saturation of today. Got a few 9-deep stacks of certain cards set aside already, just gotta get around to devoting the energy to do it.

I'll hang the display at home for a while, but as it was created for the side-hustle, it ultimately seeks a Big Unit supercollector to give it a forever-home. As for pricing, I'm thinking I'll set this at $99 shipped w/case OBO for now, though honestly I probably won't consider lower offers for a while until I'm ready to rotate something new onto the wall. LOL

Not to throw a sales pitch at you, but if you've got a certain favorite junk-era, dimebox-type card that isn't worth much but you love it and would like 9 different colored artsy variations of it to display on your wall or in a binder page, and you didn't scoff too hard at the price mentioned in the previous paragraph, feel free to drop me an email to potentially discuss commissioning something.

My wife is thankfully pretty cool (desensitized?) about the fact that we've got baseball cards displayed in every room of the house except the main bathroom, so putting up a display like this in the living room doesn't faze her. But even if you had a partner or boss who might raise an eyebrow at cards being put on display outside the designated "man cave" type area, well, one could invoke "Warhol inspired pop art" to quiet them down in their quest to stifle your creative expression.

And yeah, it's true that this proto-parallel style of cardart that I often work in was inspired by Andy Warhol. In fact, Pete Rose was my first subject for a display along these lines:

These 4 cards have already been sold to a friendly Pete Rose collector I know named Tom. He helped inspire this type of project when he put together a display from the page of Warhol customs I printed out a while back:

I can't take much credit for this-- not my artwork; I just found Warhol Rose prints online and printed them out card-sized to make a fun binder page for myself-- but I love how Tom's display turned out. It's neat that a little idea of mine grew into this and got signed off on by Charlie Hustle himself.

But back to the cardart, the "purple super" I made for the Randy Johnson was actually the 2nd such card I've ever made using that color. The first one was a show of respect to the purple one himself:

Prince! I have so many duplicate MusiCards-- I've almost completed a 3rd master set-- that it was inevitable that I'd eventually start using those extras as cardart.

It was trying to build a return card package for noted headbanger GCA that I finally inspired some MusiCardart, with the above Ozzy being among the cards I made for him. (Don't worry, I asked first if it'd be the type of thing he would want). But yeah, he seemed pretty happy with the package and indicated a post on his blog about the cards was imminent.

Other non-sports cards I've been working into the side-hustle lately are my many duplicate Mystery Science Theater 3000 cards. I've found that the glossy cards work great modified as fridge magnets:

Been able to move a few such magnets at $5 a pop. Took me a while to figure out the eBay seller settings, but I think I've finally figured out how to make combined shipping show up easier. (I felt bad the couple times buyers paid 2 identical postage costs for buying 2 items.. one of those I did a partial refund for the extra amount, the other one I just threw in a cool Dale Murphy bonus card that was better than the two he bought. But that should all be worked out now and automatically discount combined shipping.)

Plenty of old stuff still on eBay but I make a sale now and then. Here's the link to my eBay listings.

If you'd like to read more of me rambling about my cardart, I put up a side page on the blog to recap and function as my cardart homepage.

Another avenue of cardart I'm really excited about making these days are interactive cards. 

I love finding new ways to engage with (play with) my cards and get more fun out of the hobby. (Not sure if Blogger will post the 3 videos above, but) So far I've made the Ozzie Smith spinner and some "bobblecards" that are a lot of fun to boop. 

Thanks for stopping by.

COMC setwork

Time for more from my recent COMC package.

Joy of a completed set: Ripken closes the book on 1984 Donruss for me. (I just put together a simple base set; no variations.) I'll need to remember to take a moment to better enjoy the set one of these days, maybe even get a post out of revisiting it, but in the interest of time, for now I'm tipping my cap to the Iron Man and filing him away. Chagrined I wasn't able to coax any trades for it atop my Double Dozen wantlist, I went with the cheapest specimen available, hence being less than mint. Well hey, my 84D Mattingly has a little crease, so it's not like I'm sending in my set to PSA, I just appreciate knowing I've got the complete set. I've previously completed Donruss sets for 1985 and 1990, eventually hoping to finish a run from 1981 through '93 or so. But '84 and '85 are my favorites (and 90D due to sentimentality), so I'm glad I've got those in my collection now.

A while back, Padrographs Rod gave me a near-complete set of 1991 Brockum RockCards. I finally picked up the one missing base card, plus 3 variations to extra-complete the set. I won't go as far as to call it a "master set" because there's also stuff like hologram inserts and promo cards which I won't be hunting down (I do have the Axl Rose promo, though; he's not actually in the base set). But yeah, the rock set is a nice complement to my 1991 MusiCards set and the whole "music" section of my card collection I've been beefing up over the past three years or so.

I can't say I'm a huge Yes fan, though that album with "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was the first compact disc I ever bought (well, I also bought Pyromania at the same time). Listened to that album a ton, but besides that I only know like a couple other Yes songs.

I'm not too educated on the metal band Exodus, and apparently neither is Brockum, as they mixed up a couple members in their back photos. I still don't really know which guy is which, but I just know how to tell the variations apart because cards #127, 141, and 198 each have "black shirt in back photo" and "white shirt in back photo" variations.

I may never finish my ambitious project of a black refractor parallel set of 2004 Chrome, but I still like plucking cards here and there when I can find them for a decent price. This quartet of commons includes a couple guys I remember rooting for when they were with San Diego.

And check out this pair of legendary hurlers. Full disclosure, the Clemens was a recent eBay pickup, not COMC, but I've been meaning to feature it on the blog and makes sense to toss it in here. I've hit 60% complete with my goal now, with 194 cards remaining (including some toughies like Yadi [RC], Ichiro, and Pujols). It's one of those "welp, if I live long enough, perhaps I'll be able to complete this before I die" projects. But hey, I love the look of these cards and working on the set gives me a reason to keep looking at them.

To a lesser extent, I really like looking at 2015 Bowman Chrome refractors, and sometimes I'll check who's available down in the "sort by lowest price first" inventory and try to add some color to my order. Sorry for the blurry photo.. the green one is Will Middlebrooks.

Yawn, dumb ol' 1989 Bowman, right?  

Wrong! 1989 Bowman Tiffany!

You'll have to take my word for it that these babies are glossy. Love adding tiffany cards of guys I collect. Again, sorting by cheapest and seeing what catches my eye.

Looking at these after standard 1989 Bowman backs has gotta feel like you've had successful cataract surgery. I wish this could have been the default paper stock for Topps back then, though I'm sure the speckled, dark crap they used was cheaper, especially considering the huge print runs of the time. This tiffany factory set was limited to 6000 copies.

Also in my search for non-junk junk, I picked up a few 1988 Topps tiffanies.

Small black text on a dark orange background still isn't the easiest to read, but it's an improvement over that year's flagship. (Worst Topps flagship backs ever?) Ok, Hendu is from the Traded set, so the difference in quality isn't as dramatic.

A curious search for Winfield's restaurant didn't turn up much, but apparently it was called the U.S.A. Border Cafe, located at Broadway and 100th Street, serving Southwestern fare from 6 PM to midnight daily.

That'll do it for today. I think that covers everything in this COMC shipment besides a pair of (non-vintage) Mantles that completed a project for a future post. Thanks for stopping by.

Vacation Hold Mailday

Here's a post with cards that were bundled in my "vacation hold" mail waiting for me when I got back from my recent Hawaiian vacation.

First up is a great package from Fuji, starting off with a bunch of Gavins.

A pair of relics of guys I collect.

When somebody of Fuji's stature sends me cards that upon first glance don't seem to fit into my collection, that's cause for excitement and I quickly flip them over to reveal...

Christmas Cards!! Happy to find a place in my 12/25 collection for notable athletes Joe Dumars, Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson, and Marvin Harrison.

And these are super awesome too. I think that Matt Leinart might be the first Christmas Eve Card I've ever received from a cardsphere buddy. Very cool.

Thanks, Fuji! Much appreciated. I will continue keeping an eye out for cards that would be a hit with you.

-          -  - --o

My 1st 1/1 of Casey Craig, a Guy From Granite who never made the Bigs, but got a card in 2006 Bowman and Bowman Chrome. Scored this on eBay with the shipping cost being more than the winning bid. Too bad I wasn't collecting back in 2006, as I probably missed out on most of the low numbered parallels for this card including the other plates and his only superfractor (wonder where that is now, and if I'll ever see it pop up for sale), but I suppose the downside of that is they were likely more expensive back then when he was still an active prospect. (Hey, in 2006 he hit 14 homers and swiped 18 bases. Speed and power!)

-   -  - ---o

This wasn't a part of my vacation mailday, but I recently bought a blaster of 2020 Heritage. It wasn't interesting enough to get a full post out of it, so I'll just sneak this one photo of the highlights into this post. Nothing special. A few guys I collect. Available for trade are SPs of Christian Walker and David Dahl (as well as the other base not shown-- let me know if you're working on this set and I'll see if I can help you out with a trade). I like the photos on the Conforto and Sanchez paying homage to 1971 Topps, but overall not a great use of my $20.

-  - ---o

I really love all those old Kellogg's baseball sets and plan to get serious about working on them someday. But for now I'm cool stockpiling all I can. Jon at Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts had a few up for a freebie friday, and there were a couple still available to be claimed by the time I got there. Thrilled to snag Stretch and Louisiana Lightning here.

Jon also sent me a needed insert for the 1991 MusiCards master set I'm working on. And in fact the other packages in my vacation hold mailday contained more cards toward that goal. As this post comes to a close, I'd encourage you to hop over to the MusiCards Blog to check out all that stuff if you've got any interest.

Click here for that post. We also talk about The Who and take a look at a few rare MusiCards promos and venture down a rabbithole of mid-80s Slurpee discs.

Thanks for reading!

Kruk, Luz, and Tom Petty

Here's my usual blogging process:
- "Oh man, I haven't posted anything in a while.. I should work on a post."
- "How about working on one of those big drafts where I need to do some research, get several images, and will be time-consuming?"
- (beat)
- "Nah, let's just show off a recent pickup or two and call it good."
- (repeat)

Here's a beautiful card-- Or at least as "beautiful" as a John Kruk card can be. LOL. This was another instance of me "upgrading" a base auto I had from Topps Retired by scoring a refractor auto parallel. This one had been on eBay for a while, and with motivation from an eBay Bucks promo, I finally pulled the trigger on it. John Kruk is a fun dude to collect, with his everyman physique and the fact his was more of a "character" than a typical ballplayer of the era. And it's cool for me that he's a former Padre (and pictured as such of this 2005 Topps Retired card), though he had already been swapped to Philadelphia by the time I was really following baseball.

Pretty solid career. I like the story where he decided to retire right after getting a hit that brought his lifetime average up to an even .300. You gotta figure he could have stuck around a bit longer if he wanted. These cards typically feature a different photo on the back, but looks like Topps was lazy here and just reused the same picture from the front. But still, cool card.

- - --o

Like Kruk, Greg Luzinski was a working-class ballplayer best known for his time in Philadelphia and who finished his career with the White Sox.

Part of the reason I snagged this one is I got a kick out of it being upside down in the case. I know Topps goes "sticker end down" sometimes, such as with eTopps cards, but very rarely do you see it with Topps Retired cards.

The Bull was (a distant) second to Joe Morgan for NL MVP in 1975. Again runner-up for MVP to the Reds in '77, when George Foster took home the trophy. Got a ring with the Phils in '80.

- -- ---o

Had a little box-break this past weekend. Picked up this pair of unopened 1991 MusiCards shipped for about the price of a blaster. Yeah, maybe seems like a nuclear option when I only needed 27 more cards to complete the base set. But other than Night Owl and Rod, I haven't had much luck trading for these cards. And non-sport cards aren't available on Sportlots (where is the Nonsportlots? lol), so with trying to pick up the cards I need here and there from the likes of COMC and eBay, and the shipping costs involved.. yeah, buying a couple cheap boxes would likely turn out to cost about the same as hunting down 27 singles, plus going the box route gives me some fun ripping time. Even got the ever-so-rare opportunity to get my wife involved in the hobby by asking her to open a pack with me. Good times.

Tom Petty goes straight into a sleeve. Should probably put this baby in a top-loader, too. pic.twitter.com/Lmf4xwOEdL

— Baseball Card Breakdown (@breakdowncards) September 21, 2019

Happy to report that the first box included all 27 cards I needed to complete my base set. Now just a handful of variations, promos, and inserts to track down to finish a "master set". I'm keeping the 2nd box sealed for now, but still may end up busting it at some point, mainly hunting for the hologram insert. (Pro Set liked seeding one special hologram card per case or so.. I believe they also did this with their football cards.)

If anybody else happens to be working a set of MusiCards, I've got plenty of dupes now, so let me know. (Setblog for 1991 MusiCards is still on track to kick off next week!)

-  - ---o

One last thing for today...

Fuji turned me on to this Novus stuff for getting out scratches on plastic. While I wasn't able to get it perfect, I scrubbed down the Luzinski for a few minutes and definitely improved it. Specifically around the Phillies logo in the corner, you can see many of the scratches came out. Again, not quite a miracle worker, but the case looks noticeably better after treatment. Now I'll have to go through all my other encased cards and see if I can polish up some of the scuffed ones. Thanks again, Fuji.

And so ends another post. Thanks for reading!

Rod/Fuji Team-up

I mentioned in my recent card show recap that I was anxious to get the cards Rod had for me. Let's take a look at those now.

1991 MusiCards needs! This lot got me down to about 30 left (not counting the various promo cards, which I'd also like to track down). I'm kicking off a setblog for these (and more-- via customs) soon and I'm really excited about it. Rambling about music (and my youth) is one of my favorite things to do! I've already started drafting the first couple posts and it's been a lot of fun. I hope you readers follow/comment along, though I know non-baseball stuff is less exciting to the cardsphere on the whole. Anyways, stay tuned for that official announcement/link coming in October. ...probably accompanied by a contest offering up some impressive cards to bribe people to checking it out.

Rod also surprised me with a near-complete base set of 1991 Brockum Rock Cards. These are cool too, though not quite as close to my heart, as I was never a huge metal/ hard rock guy. And while I ripped some MusiCard packs back in the day, I think these are the first Brockum Rock Cards in my collection. Seems to only be missing #205 Jon Anderson (of Yes). Turns out there are also variations due to Brockum mixing up the back photos of two members of Exodus (--to be fair, they are similar looking guys.) I need #127 COR (white shirt in back photo), #141 COR (white shirt in back photo), and #198 ERR (black shirt in back photo). I was a little bummed there isn't a GNR card in there. Axl has a rare promo card, but nothing in the base set.

The music cards from Rod continue with a full 100-card set of 1993 American Bandstand. TCDB says the set is 101 cards large, but then only lists 100 cards on the checklist with no variations, so I'm not sure what the 101st card is supposed to be.. perhaps the unnumbered hologram insert. Looks like there are also "Legends Signatures" autograph inserts-- each numbered to just 100-- of Dick Clark, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Smokey Robinson. Wow! Those would be sweet pulls. American Bandstand's heyday was before my time, so I never watched the show much, but there are some acts in there I like.

Rod also was the middle man for some cards Fuji brought up with him and handed off when he briefly met up at Rod's work a few weeks back.

Nice trio of Didi rookies!

And a lot of early George Springer USA cards!

Very cool.. Thanks, Fuji!

And closing out the post with one more card from Rod...

Awesome! I know Rod has cranked out several customs of his own likeness over the years, though I don't recall ever being the lucky recipient of one before. So in the wake of my Night Owl TTM success, I made sure to ask for an auto for my budding minicollection of trader bud cards. I'll have to do a post soon recapping what-all I've got so far.

Big thanks as always, Rod!

Night Owl and Johnny with the hookup

Got a couple packages from the cardsphere recently. Let's check 'em out.

First up is papa bear Night Owl, hitting me back for a tough Kemp insert I hunted down for him a little while ago.

A bunch of 1970 Topps needs! Unexpected vintage is always great to receive. I've still got a long way to go with this set.

More set needs for me here with '74 Topps (104 cards left to go) and a '84 Donruss (34 left to go).

My '88 Fleer setbuild is chugging along nicely thanks to this lot. Highlights here are HOFer Don Sutton and a Ron Gant rookie.

The bulk of the package was a big starter lot of 1991 ProSet SuperStars MusiCards. Oh man, I love these! In fact, I've decided I'm gonna start a separate set blog for this set. Yep, a post per card. Expect it to debut this Rocktober. Hopefully I can complete the set by then. If you've got any of these available (or cards from the other sets I've mentioned so far), check out my wantlist and please get in touch if you wanna work out a trade.

There were also a few of these dummy/blank cards, which might have been just for keeping the cards packed tight, but I like receiving these as they're good for turning into sketchcards. I haven't been feeling too artistic lately, but I like to have a surplus of these on hand for when the creative urge strikes. One of these days I'm gonna go nuts and crank out a bunch of sketchcards over the span of a couple days.. you just wait.

Thanks for the cards, Greg!

-     -    -    -   -   -  ---o

The other incoming cards that I got in the past couple weeks (not counting purchases) were from John Miller at Johnny's Trading Spot. Sidenote, it must be liberating to be able to use your full name online and not have to worry about it. There aren't many [if any] other dudes in the world with my first/last name combo, so I tend to try to be a little more private with it. But "John Miller".. shiiii... thousands of dudes with that name! Let it fly.

Anyways, these cards were my prize for being one of the several winners in his recent blogiversary contest.

A pair of Myers and a Giles.

Johnny always has Gavins for me. That minor league card was a treat.

A couple 2011 Topps parallels, which if you haven't noticed, have been bolstered in my collection recently. One of these was a need and the other I already had.... because John already sent it to me years ago, lol. Whatever, I'm cool with being his go-to guy for these. While I'm just over halfway thru with this project according to my spreadsheet, in actuality the cards are pretty much all unsorted and with tons of dupes mixed in.. one of these years I'll sort it out and have a fat stack of dupes to trade.

Wrapping up with a Gold Story and a pretty girl. Hey, I married a pretty Wilkins girl myself! But no relation to Maci, as far as I know.

Had to show off the backside, too. Looks like her butt got a little sandy, but she should rinse off just fine.

Thanks, John!

-- - ---o

Stop the presses: we have a late entry for this roundup of incoming cards!

You might remember the Pirates-centric blog Big 44 Cards from a few years ago? Well, Nate is back after a few years away, with his blog rebranded as The Buc Stops Here. Good to see him blogging again!

Nate caught my recent post about 2011 Topps parallels and kindly checked his inventory to see if he had any I needed. A PWE from him just showed up moments ago.

Nice! A Cutch appearance highlights this pair of needs.

Thanks, Nate! Much appreciated.


And thanks to the rest of you all for reading.

One last thing.. Happy Birthday to my pup Annie Lou who turned 7 today.